


Random Acts

by Dassandre



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, Graphic Violence, Hate Crime, Heavy Angst, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Pre-Slash, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-15 23:38:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15424161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dassandre/pseuds/Dassandre
Summary: They grabbed him off the street not long after he exited Waterloo Station.  It had been late, the penultimate train of the night.  In his exhaustion, Q’d not looked about him for potential threats as he ought to have done.





	Random Acts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Boffin1710](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boffin1710/gifts), [AsheTarasovich (natalieashe)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/natalieashe/gifts), [springbok7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/springbok7/gifts).



> This has been sitting about in one form or another since last year's 007Fest. I'm posting it as a one-shot for now, but I might revisit it later.
> 
> It's being posted for 2018 007 Fest's Angst Week. It has been neither betaed nor Brit-picked. All errors are my own.
> 
>  
> 
> HEED THE TAGS!!

Though Q hit the frozen ground with an audible thump, his corresponding grunt was more of an aborted, muffled whimper; the gaffer’s tape plastered over his lips -- securing the ball gag which apparently just wasn’t enough on its own -- prevented anything more than that.  Normally, Q would have been exasperated at the redundancy of the tape which had been wrapped  _ thrice _ around his head, but his situation was far from normal.  Q was too bloody terrified to be worried about the sodding tape.

He had  _ known _ better than to eschew a Six-approved driver to take him home after working 52 hours straight.  He really had. Eve had given him a right bollocking the last time he’d done so. He’d fallen asleep on the Tube and found himself at the end of the Jubilee in bloody Stratford of all places.  

_ That _ time, Q had been on the final train of the night:  a frighteningly typical scenario. However, in a staggeringly  _ atypical _ fashion, he’d left his wallet -- home to his Oyster card and the rest of his cards and cash -- on the table in the foyer when he’d rushed out of his flat on a rare day off to meet the driver sent to bring him to Six to salvage a mission gone pear-shaped.  The same driver Eve asserted he should have used to get home instead of forcing  _ her _ to turn cabbie.  

“It’s why we have drivers, Q,” Moneypenny had groused with a sharp snap of her forefinger to his temple in a move far too reminiscent of that employed by his easily irritated eldest brother when Q was but a child.  “ _Use_ _them_!  I’m not driving out to Stratford or Stanmore or sodding Cockfosters to pick up your scrawny arse again!” 

Q had thought it only prudent to remind her it was the  _ Piccadilly _ line that terminated at Cockfosters.  Not the Jubilee.

Quite the opposite of prudent, really.  

Rubbing his now quite sore temple, Q had thought Eve’s anger a bit excessive at the time, even if he had pulled her out of a warm, and probably not ...  _ solely _ occupied, bed to come to get him.  

So, Q promised Eve -- who after her initial outburst, had driven him the long miles back to Lambeth in stony silence -- and Mallory, who cited as his concerns the safety and security of his Quartermaster, that he would use a driver for any future late nights. 

Q had had every intention of fulfilling his promise -- M was mildly threatening, but Moneypenny was bloody terrifying -- and had done quite well the first two months, but after running three complex missions in two different hemispheres, Q was exhausted.  However, he had agreed to meet Bond for an early lunch after the agent’s return from Detroit the next day and had been desperate to get home and grab some kip. Exhausted and grouchy, waiting for a driver had been just one more unnecessary, tedious frustration Q didn’t care to contend with.  Besides, a walk up to Westminster Station and quick ride under the river would see him to his flat behind The Old Vic in short order.

He never made it home. 

They grabbed him off the street not long after he exited Waterloo Station.  It had been late, the penultimate train of the night. In his exhaustion, he’d not looked about him for potential threats as he ought to have done.

Would he ever again have the chance to ring up Eve at half one in the morning and beg for a ride home?  He’d been thinking about that a lot in the last three days. 

At least he thought it had been three days.   Maybe it was longer. It couldn’t possibly have been less than that. Not given-- not given ... 

Everything.

Q’s memory of the attack was indistinct.  

They used a taser to the back of his neck to grab him -- he had thought  _ that _ pain agonising at the time; naught but a mosquito bite to what would come, as it would happen -- but he recalled being tossed into the back of a lorry.  And it seemed before he’d even hit the floor that that bloody gag had been pressed into his mouth and a heavy canvas bag pulled over his head. 

He hadn’t seen the light of day since, and the gag had been removed only a handful of times -- a few sips of water through a straw -- before it was secured again to contain his screams when they started breaking his fingers.  

And his wrist.

Carved up his feet.

His chest.

That was before the burns.

And the ... more …

He started screaming in his head when he no longer had the voice, however contained, to scream aloud.

Only three days.  

He’d been roused earlier from a restless and pain-plagued sleep, shoved into the boot of a car, and driven around … seemingly forever.  When they’d finally reached their destination, Q was tossed unceremoniously onto the cold, hard ground where he now lay. He felt the snow beneath his body melt into the thin cotton of his shredded button-down and wool trousers, but he barely felt the kicks to his abdomen.  His ribs. Kidneys.

The ones to his head made-- 

Made him ... 

Where ...

Oh.  

Face down.  Shallow hole.  Winter. Frozen earth.  

Can’t have been easy to dig. 

The coarse rope that for days had cut into the tender skin of his wrists, was gone.  Zip ties now secured his wrists and elbows behind his back and his legs at the ankle and knee.  Q struggled to breathe through the canvas bag that was tightly secured about his neck with cabling and a lock of some sort; the weight of it pressed into the abraded flesh of his throat.

His feet were freezing but at least they didn’t hurt anymore. 

He couldn’t move.  He couldn’t see. He couldn’t speak.

Taste and smell were muted by his own fear.  Q could, however, hear. 

He heard them discussing their ‘options.’  

“We gonna shoot ‘im first?”  Q had become quite used to the press of a muzzle -- 9 mill, Smith & Wesson? -- against his temple and the crack of its weight against the back of his skull. 

“Dunno.  Seems a bit too easy given what a pain in the arse he’s been.”

“You wanna make ‘im suffer?”

“Course I do!  Fuckin’ poofter kicked me i’ the bollocks.  Wait. Got an idea … gimme one of those, would ya?  This aught to get ‘is attention.”

The sound of a shovel being pushed through recently turned earth roused Q from his confused daze. He started to thrash at the sound of approaching footfalls.  He screamed behind the gag when the first spade full of dirt hit his neck and shoulders.

They were burying him alive.

Q fought violently against his bindings, but though he was stronger and broader through the shoulders than most gave him credit for, he couldn’t get enough leverage to snap his bonds.  

Adrenaline fueled his struggles, but would it last long enough to--  

He twisted and screamed and fought.  If he was going to die, and he probably was, he wouldn’t go quietly. 

Q’s legs connected with something other than earth, and Q smiled behind the gag at the cry of pain he heard on the other side of the canvas.  

His thrashing about had wormed him near the edge of the shallow hole, and he had managed to kick one of his captors in the bollocks; his bare feet wouldn’t have done enough damage anywhere else to warrant such an agonized response.    

Small victory, perhaps even a hollow one, but Q would take what he could get.

“Easy bruv.  If you knock ‘im out with the shovel, ‘e won’t suffer like ya wanted ‘im to, yeah?”

More dirt.  More screaming from behind the gag and the tape and the sack.

More twisting … but less than before.  

Hypoxia.

The weight of the dirt pressing him into the ground and the effects of days of torture -- torture, he’d learned, which had nothing to do with what Q  _ did _ but everything to do with the gender of who he  _ loved _ \-- were becoming too much to fight against.  

“Q?”

Q froze.  

“Quartermaster … Q?   _ Leo _ ?  Please, can you hear me?”

That voice.  It was  _ in _ his ear, not outside of it.

Deep.  Weary. Familiar.

Bond.

The earwig implant?  Q thought it had shorted out from the taser. 

“Q, I can hear you, but I need to know if you can hear me.  Grunt twice if you can.”

For the first time in his long memory, Q readily,  _ eagerly _ , obeyed an order.

“Confirm.”

Q groaned, barely, twice more.  It took nearly all the energy he had left.

“Thank Christ,” James huffed in Q’s ear.  “I’m almost to you. Less than two minutes out.  Leo … just stay alive.”

_ Not exactly … within my … control at the … moment, 007 _ , Q thought with wearied snark.  _ So do ... please, hurry. _  But the knowledge that James was nearby lent Q strength.

“D’ya hear that?”

“Someone’s coming.  Let’s get outta here.”  

“En’ this.”

Q’s screams and renewed thrashing were cut short by a bullet fired into the dirt that entombed him. He could feel its impact just to the side of his right ear.  

The next one exploded in his shoulder.

He heard Bond’s voice again through the experimental implant in his ear.  

Double-O Seven was here.  

The earth began to vibrate around him, and the part of Q’s brain that wasn’t subsumed in primal survival instinct recognized the sharp retort of gunfire being exchanged, an explosion, screams and then silence.  On the whole, however, Q couldn’t distinguish anything beyond the burning agony in his back and the fact that he was losing the battle for every stuttering ... insufficient ... breath.

James was here.  

Bond was fighting for him, but Q was still going to die.

_ Promising career ... in ... espionage ... so … overrated _ , Q thought just before his lungs gave up their fight.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you thought of this piece. Comments are love, but criticism is unwelcome at this time.


End file.
